What Made Him Change His Mind?

At first Pharaoh seemed to believe Moses when God sent the plagues. What made him change his mind? Some say it was the cook he hired, even though his most trusted traitor had warned him that she was a spy who couldn’t be trusted. He had a sneaking suspicion that she had swiped his favorite pomegranate pudding recipe and prepared it for her cat, and decided to fire her. But he was indecisive and eventually changed his mind.

Back and forth, up and down. All he seemed to do was change his mind.

One day the cook Pharaoh never should have hired was busy kneading dough in the royal kitchen. Her silly daughter Suzie sat nearby, building a toy pyramid. Suddenly a green hoppy thing jumped through the open window.

It landed on the cook’s head. “Ack! Somebody save me!” she screamed.

“Don’t worry, Mom. It’s just my pet frog,” Suzie said.

“Since when did you have a pet frog?” asked her mother.

“It just hopped in through the window.”

“We are not allowed to keep frogs in the palace, so you just –”

“Rrrr-rrrr-ribit!”

“I’ll catch it!” yelled silly Suzie, with noble intent.

Those words did nothing to pacify her mother. “It’s tangled in my hair. Get it out, get it out!”

“Hold still, Mom. I’ll fetch a broom.”

“No, don’t!”

“Whack!”

“Splat!”

First the frog landed in the kneading bowl. Then two more amphibians joined the party, causing the cook to scream again. The frogs hopped from the kneading bowl to the cupboard, back into the kneading bowl, off the table, and to the shelf on which the cook had placed Pharaoh’s favorite recipe.

Silly Suzie continued to chase the frogs with her broom.

“Smash!” There went Pharaoh’s famous hand-painted pitcher.

“Crack!” There went his delicate mosaic lamp.

His favorite dessert recipe, made of hand-crafted stained glass, fell to the floor and shattered.

At that very moment Pharaoh happened to poke his head through the door. “Just checking on lunch,” he began to say, when suddenly a frog jumped in his face.

“Whack!” Suzie swung her broom right at it.

“Ow!”

“Oops, sorry. It was an accident.”

Two days later Pharaoh, his nose swollen like a balloon, tired of having frogs hop all over him. As soon as he rid himself of one, two more would hop in his face. He hadn’t had a decent meal to eat in three days, due to all the frogs hopping into his food, jumping onto his ear, and messing up his newly shampooed hair. So he called up Moses, yelled at him about the frogs, and asked him to pray for him. Moses said he’d pray, and the frogs died immediately.

“Okay, I’ll let your people go,” he told Moses. Then he changed his mind. Why did he change his mind?

Well, some say the fact that they croaked so swiftly convinced Pharaoh that his cook had poisoned them with the intent of putting them into his food and making him sick. She was trying to kill him, he told himself. So much for Moses telling him God had sent the plague of frogs! He must be in league with the evil cook!

Pharaoh fired her, then told Moses he refused to let his people go. After all, he was no fool. If he couldn’t find good help from this sneaky Egyptian lady, then he must stock up on foreign slaves. It was the only way he knew to save his skin.